gordianplotfandomcom-20200214-history
GATHERING THE story MATERIALS
GATHERING THE MATERIALS Of an eminent master in eloquence and letters this is said: " He habitually fed himself with any kind of knowledge which was at hand. If books were at his elbow, he read them; if pictures, engravings, gems were within reach, he studied them; if nature was within walking distance, he watched nature; if men were about him, he learned the secrets of their temperaments, tastes, and skills; if he were on shipboard, he knew the dialect of the vessel in the briefest possible time; if he traveled by stage, he sat with the driver and learned all about the route, the country, the people, and the art of his companion; if he had a spare hour in a village in which there was a manufactory, he went through it with keen eyes, and learned the mechanical processes used in it"—HAMILTON W. MABIE, Essays on Books and Culture. The writer is first of all a citizen of the world, with eyes alert to explore its delights, its sorrows, and its mysteries. . No other ever has a yarn to spin. Next, he turns his gaze inward. Lastly, he studies books. If you must omit one of these three processes, let it be the last. Once convinced that somewhere in you are a theme, a story, and the spirit of a storyteller, the first step would seem to be simply the telling of the story. Logically, yes; practically, no. To do so would be to ignore the fact that skillful story-telling is now a fine art, and badly-told stories had better remain untold — as they generally remain imprinted. Before giving forth, you must prepare by taking in, even if that preparation should be quite unconscious. The general question of the author's preparation for his work must be discussed in succeeding chapters, 1but it should be said here that a primary requisite for successful authorship is the fixed habit of both training and furnishing the mind for the author's work. All things must be looked at with an eye to their possible literary use, so that daily life may become a daily storing up of materials, whether with a single story in view or merely to enrich the treasure house against the day when some chosen theme will call forth its utmost resources. So bear in mind, in all that follows, that your gathering will have either a particular or a general object. In this process the first and longest step is I. Observation Get the facts. If you can, get them at first hand. They will hit you harder, and, through you, hit your readers harder, if you have gone straight to the original for your knowledge. Ruskin took a common rock-crystal and saw hidden within its stolid heart a world of interest. Thoreau sat so still in the shadowy woods that birds and insects came and opened up their secret lives to. his eye. Preyer for three years studied the life of his babe and so became an authority upon the child mind. Sir Walter Scott, in preparing to describe Guy Denzil's cave, in Rokeby, observed " even the peculiar little wild flowers and herbs that accidentally grew round and on the side of a bold crag. " When Lockhart laughingly wondered at this minuteness of study, the Wizard replied that " in nature herself no two scenes were exactly alike, and that whoever copied truly what was before his eyes, would possess the same variety in his descriptions, and exhibit apparently an imagination as boundless as the range of nature in the scenes he recorded; whereas — whoever trusted to imagination, would soon find his own mind circumscribed, and contraded to a few favorite images. "2 " 'Whoever has done literary work, " says Arlo Bates, 3" is likely to have discovered how constantly the literary mind must be on the alert. The daughters of the horse leech that in the Scriptures are said continually to cry ' Give! Give ' are less insatiable than is the greedy pen of the professional writer. Like the grave, it has never enough. He who makes literature a profession must take for his model the barnacle at high tide. As that busy and tireless unpleasantness grasps ceaselessly with finger-like tentacles, so the mind of the writer must be always reaching out — grasping, grasping, grasping — until the accumulation of ideas, of facts, of impressions, with the realization that this is literary material, becomes a second nature. " And Professor Genung has given us this : " The spirit of observation, as applied to the world in general, outer and inner, is practically identical with what is called . . . the scientific spirit in the large sense, with all the enthusiasm, the sense of values, the accuracy, the verifying caution, that characterize the born observer. " But the story-writer will find quite as much suggestive material in observing human nature as in studying the lower orders of creation. With the works of the great analysts to serve as models and stimulate the writer to emulation, surely no further word is needed. Here indeed is a field for applied psychology, second to none other. Myriads of interesting men and women are waiting for some master hand to pluck out the heart of their mystery. Holman Day, Mary Wilkins Freeman, and " 0. Henry, " have not " used up " all the unique characters in America. It may be urged that all this elaborate and minute observation would serve rather to equip the novelist than the writer of short-stories. Not so. No one can compress into a few bold strokes the essentials of a portrait, who has not first taken in with precision all the nonessentials. The work of literary selection is really a work of rejection. 2. Experience " Mark Twain deliberately threw away his European street-car ticket fifteen times, and each time was required to pay his fare. He made five hundred dollars from the story which he based upon this simple incident" 5In Vawder's Understudy, James Knapp Reeve tells the story of an author who entered open-eyed into a platonic friendship for the purpose of observing results. The results were observable. In Tommy and Grizel, Tommy the sentimentalist-author, makes a number of startling essays at the laboratory method of gathering literary material. Doubtless all these and similar experiences are exceptional rather than typical. Experience may be deliberately sought, and often should be, as in the cases of the authors of The Workers, ° The Woman Who Toils; and similar books ; but for the most part the really valuable experience is that into which our daily walk leads us. There we shall find an abundance of the " literatesque, " 3without more than an occasional prolonged 5The 'Short-Story, Albright, p. 15. 6Professor Walter Wyckoff. Marie Van Vorst and Mrs. John Van Vorst. 8"There should be a word in the language of literary art to express what the word 'picturesque' expresses for the fine arts. Picturesque means fit to be put into a picture; we want a word literatesque, ' fitto be put into a book. ' An artist goes through a hundred different country scenes, _rich with beauties, charms and merits. but he does not paint any of them. He leaves them alone; be idles on till be finds the hundred-and-first—a scene which many observers would not think much of, but which he knows by virtue of his art will look well on canvas, and this he palate and preserves. . . . Literature — the painting of words—has the same quality, but wants the analogous word. The word giteratesque'would mean, if we possessed it, that perfect combination in the subject-matterof literature, which suits the art of literature. . . . As a painter must not only have a hand to execute, but an eye to distinguish—as he must go here and there through the real world to catch the picturesque man, the picturesque scene, which is to live on his canvas — so excursion into atmospheres far removed from our own. Growing out of observation and experience, as sources of literary materials, is 3. Self-study " Sir Philip Sidney had a saying, Looke in thy heart and write '; Massillon explained his astute knowledge of the human heart by saying, I learned it by studying myself '; Byron says of John Locke that ' all his knowledge of the human understanding was derived from studying his own mind. ' " 9 One peril lies along this path, however, and to it the famed author of Childe Harold fell a victim; its avoidance is a mark of real greatness. All that Byron ever wrote was so tinctured with his own personality that the reader must see the author's portrait in his characters. They all do and think and say very nearly what Byron would, under like conditions. Maupassant fell into the same trap, as did Poe and Hawthorne, though in less degree. '° All morbid and self-centered artists are peculiarly liable to study self so exclusively that self becomes their microcosm. A certain amount of this self centric spirit is inevitable, but to dress and undress one's soul too persistently leads to mania, and may be allowed to epoch-making geniuses rather than to the rank and the poet must find in that reality, the literatesque man, the literatesquescene which nature intends for him, and which will live in his page. "— Bagehot, Literary Studies, Vol. II, pp. 341, 343, 345. 9From the Author's How to. Attract and Hold an Audience p. 55. (Hinds, Hayden & Eldredge. New York. ) 10See p. 248. 57 file. Yet what marvelous short-stories have Poe, Hawthorne, and Maupassant given to the world by their morbid introspection ! The golden middle-path, as Horace put it, is better for the average writer — if such , a person there be. 4. Reflection Here we have a calmer, saner mental habit than morbid self-scrutiny. Reflection is a rich word, which carries its meaning in a figure. How placid and clear the mind must be to summon to its magic mirror images of past days and find them projected there in all their pristine color, form and detail. Memory is the soul of reflection, just reason its limbs and members. This ability to withdraw oneself from the hurly-burly and reflect — re-image — gives us a palpable connection between the real and the fancied. Imagination calls up its phantom-world out of the mirror of past experience, adding to the real the touch of fantasy, and even creating beings and cycles the like of which " never was on sea or land. " Reflection and imagination both need to be nurtured with the food of solitude and humored by oft-practice; and both repay the time and care bestowed. In Afterthoughts of aStory-Teller, 11George W. Cable says : " No author, from whatever heaven, earth, or hell of actual environment he may write, can produce a living narrative of motives, passions and fates without having first felt the most of it and apprehended it all, in his own inner life. " You see, experience may in a sense be vicarious — the " inner life " may apprehend experiences that the body has never realized. 5. Reading " Reading maketh a full man, " said much-quoted Bacon ; but it depends upon the reader as to what he will be full of —other men's ideas, or a dynamic store of fact and fancy. Writers do not read too much; they digest too little. A prodigious diet of reading, assimilated into brain and heart, cannot but be of vast assistance in all future creation. But to be the slavish imitator of those whom you read is the sign-manual of inferiority. Here is an enthusiastic word from Professor Phelps, 12supported by a warning from Emerson. " Voltaire used to read Massillon as a stimulus to production. Bossuet read Homer for the same purpose. Gray read Spenser's Faerie Queene ' as the preliminary to the use of his pen. The favorites of Milton were Homer and Euripides. Fenelon resorted to the ancient classics promiscuously. Pope read Dryden as his habitual aid to composing. Corneille read Tacitus and Livy. . . With great variety of tastes, successful authors have generally agreed in availing themselves of this natural and facile method of educating their minds to the work of original creation. " " Books are the best of things, well used ; abused, among the worst. What is the right use? What is the one end which all means go to effect? They are for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book than to be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system. " Emerson here 18uses the enthusiast's license to exaggerate, but it is a wholesome hyperbole and will not frighten the sensible reader out of a respect for the information as well as the inspiration to be found in books. " In the same essay, a little farther on, he adds another pungent word: " One must be an inventor to read well. As the proverb says He that would bring home the wealth of the Indies must carry out the wealth of the Indies. ' There is then creative reading as well as creative writing. " There remains yet another potent field for the gathering of short-story material : 6. Discussion Hawthorne's notebooks refer again and again to talks over plots, incidents, and characters, held with literary o friends. Sometimes he definitely credits certain material. ; to a suggestion received in such discussions. Many a lit tle restaurant table, many a " Bohemian " garret, could tell fascinating tales of how stories were born and brought unto strength by a helpful exchange of suggestion and criticism. As there is nothing so blinding to a writer as to read his manuscript to adulating friends, so there is nothing so illuminating as the good-natured slashes of a discerning critic — the entrance of such cutting words giveth light. It was Francis Bacon who discoursed upon the educational value of asking questions from the man who knows, and Li Hung Chang who put the advice into effective use. But how shall we preserve for ourselves the results of observation, and experience, and self-study, and reflection, and reading, and discussion? The answer is too obvious to need elaboration : 7. Tdking Notes Let it be scrap-book, card-index, index-rerum, envelope system, or filing cabinet ; only in some way — loosely or precisely, on your cuffs or in elaborate records — preserve your own random thoughts and the facts and ideas you get from every source. See what even a newspaper item may mean to you : " A short-story should have for its structure a plot, a bit of life, an incident such as you would find in a brief newspaper paragraph. . . . He Harding Davis takes the substance of just such a paragraph, and, with that for the meat of his story, weaves around it details, description and dialogue, until a complete story is the result. " 15 is to Write Short Stories. An Interview with F. Hop kinson Smith in the Boston. Herald, quoted in Current Literature. , June, 1896. OUTLINE SUMMARY GATHERING THE MATERIALS i. Observation z Experience • Self-Study • • Reflection S. Reading • • Discussion • • Taking Notes • QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES FOR CLASS AND INDIVIDUAL STUDY. I. After one glance out of a window, set down as many different objects as you remember seeing, going minutely into detail. z. Take a longer look and correct your paper. In what respects do two —any two — of your friends differ (a) in dress, (b) manner, © disposition? Be precise and minute. Non: Interesting tests of the powers of observation may be made by asking the pupils to tell the color of a friend's eyes, how many rungs are in the front of his chair, how many steps lead up to the piazza, the kind of numerals on the face of his watch, and the like—all without specially looking. Search for evidences of superficial observation in the short stories of any current magazine. Write out any unusual experiences which seem to you to be "literatesque. " Discussion: Should the writer deliberately go out after adventures and experiences, or simply be observant of what he meets in the usual course? Give reasons "pro and con. " Write about two hundred words showing how " self-awareness" is a good source of fictional material. Write several paragraphs reporting accurately what you are now thinking. Continuously press in upon yourself the question, What am I now thinking? 9. Do an hour's deliberate reading, following your own choice, and report the result, carefully noting such materials as suggest incidents, characters, scenes, sayings, and plots, for short stories. Do sot seek for quantity, but for quality. is General report: What kinds of reading proved most stimulating—history, essays, poetry, drama, fiction? :. Let the instructor assign to the students, individually, the task of suggesting how scrapbooks, card-indexes, etc. , may be kept. 12. Gather at least five newspaper cuttings which contain raw material for short-stories, pointing out their particular qualities. category:The writing process